Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Inside a Homicide Investigation: The First 48’s Chris Anderson on Catching Killers
Sun, 09 Feb 2025
Matt talks with Retire Homicide Detective Chris Anderson regarding the various homicide cases that shaped his life. Detective Anderson's Book https: //www.amazon.com/Case-Investigation-Det-Christopher-Anderson/dp/B0BW2GDPWD/Book a Call With Dan Wise https://calendly.com/federalprisontime/matt-coxFollow me on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrimeDo you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: [email protected] you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69
Chapter 1: What was Chris Anderson's experience as a homicide detective?
And that was for five seasons? Yeah, man, yeah. So yeah, Discovery, yeah, going on to Reasonable Doubt was a huge change in my career. I'm used to investigating homicide cases and working cold cases and things of that nature.
But getting the opportunity to go from, you know, as a homicide investigator in the NBA, featured on First 48, and then going into my old show, Reasonable Doubt, and running it for five years, man, that was, you know, that was a huge change.
It was life-changing for me, actually, to see some of the cases that I've worked, see some of the cases that others have worked, and being able to sit down and really get some people some help. That was one of the best things I've done in my career.
So I'm wondering when you go in and speak with. So you go to reinvestigate a case and you go and do the homicide detectives that had worked the case, like, are they are they OK with that? Are they irritated? Like they feel like, hey, this guy's, you know, looking over my shoulder or double checking my work or. Or are they open to it, like, man, we want the help?
Chapter 2: What are the challenges of reinvestigating homicide cases?
So, yeah, some of the cases I've looked into, they run the gamut of everything they just said. I've run into some cases where some guys have... been very open to having somebody look at another case. I've had some guys that felt like I was looking over their shoulders and they had to critique their work and things of that nature.
And I've had some that just flat out said, no, you're not going to tell me my work is wrong. That's kind of like the mindset of a homicide investigator. You don't want people critiquing your work
Chapter 3: How did Chris Anderson's career change with the show Reasonable Doubt?
You know, you always want to maintain one of the worst things that could happen to a police officer and even a homicide investigator, especially is to have someone come in and say that someone you were responsible for convicting your investigation was responsible of convicting. The worst thing to say was that guy was wrongfully convicted.
So I can understand some of these guys and I won't mean to come in and question. But on the other hand, I look at it like this. There have been lots of cases where people have been wrongfully convicted. And as a matter of fact, there are innocent people that are sitting in prison now.
Whenever an investigation has been done and a trial has been conducted and you have more questions that still remain than answers, then you should be willing to open up the books and let's reinvestigate, let's re-look into what happened in this case and see if maybe we got this one wrong.
Yeah. I, so I've, you know, I've spoken with a lot of, of, uh, law enforcement and I always, it's funny, like with my opinion of homicide detectives are that like they, they're very they tend to be very focused on not convicting, but solving that crime. Because there's no worse crime than murder, obviously. And it's funny, you tend to get... Those are the guys that raise up through the ranks.
You know what I mean? They have a goal. That's what they want to do. They want to get to become a homicide detective. So usually the best... The best guys. And a lot of times that I've I've just noticed that they're super driven and they don't care about anything else. It's like, look, like all these other crimes are, you know, almost a joke in comparison to murder.
It's like, oh, you're the guy had a gun. OK, great. The guy was smoking pot. OK, great. The guy had. Look, I don't care about any of that. I'll take any help. You know, I want, you know, I want to solve this crime and I could care less about anything that I have to do to get to that point or who I have to deal with and talk to because those other crimes don't mean anything. Right.
So, which I like about that. What I don't like is what you're saying, like that would upset me. It's like, okay, I get you feel like the guy committed the crime. but do you really know it?
Right. And yeah, so you're absolutely right. I mean, homicide investigators are extremely driven individuals. You have to be driven. You have to be extremely focused because when you're not focused and when you're not driven, When you get tired, you gotta go home if you're not driven.
If you're not focused, when you're looking at those cases and walking through the crime scenes and having to process the millions of bits of information that are coming to you without warning, if you're not focused, you'll miss something that's extremely important. So yeah, most homicide investigators that I've known, that I've met in my career, They were extremely focused.
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Chapter 4: What personal sacrifices did Chris make during his career?
And he was seriously injured and handicapped for the rest of his life. He's still alive today, but he was handicapped during that time. And he never could really hold down a job or anything like that. So my mom, while she raised three boys, she also had to take care of her husband. You know, she was the breadwinner of our family after my father was almost murdered.
So, I mean, what are your, you have what, two brothers? I have two brothers. I have an older brother. I'm the middle child of us three. I was probably, anyone that knows me and my family, I was the one that was least likely to, anyone could ever see me being a law enforcement officer. I was that one that didn't make the great grades. I was the one that always stayed in trouble.
If there was any one of my mother's children that may have ended up in prison, it would have been me. But God had a different calling for me and a different path. I ended up going into police work at a young age. My brothers are both very successful. And now we look after our parents. They're not in law enforcement? No.
No, no, I was the only one of my mother's children that went into law enforcement.
How long were you on the force before you became a homicide detective? And what made you want to become one in general? Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely. So going into law enforcement and having a mother like mine, who was very well known, very well respected within the department, I wanted to carve my own way. Uh, and, and, and not walk, I'm gonna have to walk in her footsteps, but I wanted to carve my own way. And one thing that she never wanted to be was an investigator. You know, she always loved school resources.
She always loved being, you know, a supervisor and things of that nature. So she was great at everything she did. Uh, so me, I wanted a different path. So, you know, I went into law enforcement, uh, at 21 and I did about five years in patrol. And my time in patrol was probably some of the greatest times that I've had in police work.
But after about five years in patrol, I think the year I hired on in 1995, that was four years. I hired on in 1995. In 1999, I was promoted to, which I did a little stint in narcotics. Narcotics really wasn't for me. But I ended up getting promoted into our burglary unit. And from there, in 1999, I want to say it was, and from 1999 all the way up to, wow, 2011 or 12, I was in the investigations.
I moved around to several different units, but I went to Homicide in 2005 and stayed there until I was promoted to Sergeant in 2011. I spent the most time at Homicide. Were you gunning for homicide? Absolutely. Oh. Absolutely.
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Chapter 5: What case impacted Chris Anderson the most?
I'm trying to learn, gather all this information and learn how to do this job as well as I could. And I had gotten a pretty good Go at it. And but during that time, I kind of left my wife and all my kids and they, you know, wasn't around like I should have been. And she had gotten fed up. And plus, you know, I was doing all kinds of other stuff.
You know, I wasn't the most, you know, faithful guy, let's put it like that. Right. So, you know, it happens like that. So we get out, and my wife, I come into the house, and she's already tired because I told her I was coming home. Ended up not getting home for hours. My kids were waiting up for me. She had made dinner for me. I'm like, okay, I'm sick of it right now. So I go upstairs.
I talk to my kids for a little while. I eat my food, and me and her are about to get into an argument, and I get a call. Now, I'll tell you what really... helped me to become really why this case was so touching to me. So I get a call out that a young lady, the young girl has been murdered. And,
They asked me to come out to the crime scene, which I'm going to go anyway because I'm the lead investigator that night. Get out to the crime scene, and I'm looking at this vehicle. This vehicle is, say, like a 2004, 2005 BMW. It's lodged up on the side of a wall, and the tires are still engaged because the victim
She's been shot inside of her vehicle, and she tried to drive away from her attacker, and he shot one time through the car, strikes her in the back of her head, and she died instantly. So the car ended up wrecking, and it's lodged on the side of a wall, and we couldn't get it out of gear before I got out there until we could take some precautions to not screw up the crime scene. Excuse me.
Excuse me. At any rate, I get out to the crime scene and the whole while there, I'm thinking to myself, you know, I need to try to straighten this stuff out with my wife because I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do as a father. I know that. I'm not being a husband. I shouldn't be.
So I get out to the crime scene and I'm not spending enough time with my kids and those were the most important things in my life. Get out to the crime scene and I'm taking down my notes and I'm looking in the car at the victim. Now they've got everything set up to where I can get close enough to it and take down my notes before they remove the body from the car.
And I'm writing down my notes and the guy, I asked the guy, I said, what's her name? And he says, Kayla. And I stopped for a second. You know, her name is what? Kayla. My daughter's name is Kayla. This young lady is not too much older than my daughter. So, From that point, I'm already struck because I hadn't spent any time with my kids.
I'm already going through this mental thing that we go through as homicide investigators. And from that point on, everything that I saw, everything that I did, every picture that I looked at, I didn't see my victim's face. I saw my own child's face. And I thought about everything that was going, that was happening about, you know, how I wasn't spending any time with her.
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Chapter 6: How does DNA technology aid in solving homicide cases?
I mean, but do you have any one in particular that's interesting that was complicated that you eventually put it together for some, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the ones that are usually the most complex are your serial cases. And I've only had one of those because those are not, usually your serial cases are not, you know, they're not, how can I, they are those random acts of violence. Right. This person sees someone that they think would make, would become a, they could be an easy target.
They do whatever, you know, and they commit the murder. So those are, those are the ones that you have to, that are extremely hard to put together because it usually takes a lot of working, moving parts. And I have one like that. And this one wasn't, Yeah, this one was, it was kind of random, but there was a connection between the victim and the suspect.
So I had this young girl, she was 17 years old at the time that she was murdered. So here's the scenario. Her and her mom had been on some really bad terms. And when she gets out of school, she was responsible for going to her mom's job, sitting down with her for about two or three hours and then riding home with her mom from work because her mom just didn't trust her in the house by herself.
She's a little bit. So on this particular day, this girl had been on punishment for on this punishment that her mom had, you know, enforced on her. She was had to get off the bus and come to sit up there with her at work until her mom got off and then her mom would take her home. But on this day, the mom said, allows her to go on home.
You know, go to the house a little bit early because her mom had to work some overtime. And this young lady had to do some homework. So she allowed her to go home. Mom comes home about four hours later, finds her daughter. She's been murdered. She had been strangled to death. And then the suspect cut her throat. And he cut her throat after she was murdered.
Her body was positioned and posed in a way that it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't just random. You could tell that the body had been posed. So the way that she was posed, it led me to believe that, you know, it was somebody that was kind of close to her. She had a boyfriend who I had some witnesses who said that, you know, they had seen the guy lurking around the house earlier that day.
Uh, and, uh, so I'm, I'm thinking, okay, this is my guy. I need to go pick him up. You know, he's where I need to start. Pick the guy up, bring him in for questioning. He doesn't confess, like doesn't admit to anything, but I get the witnesses, uh, and who says that, okay, they can identify him as the person that was lurking around the house that day, but nothing, uh, That was it.
You know, he was very convincing in the interview room. And I didn't feel right about putting him in jail at the moment. The mom's pissed off. She was totally pissed off. I didn't feel right about putting him in jail. So I did. And I didn't have enough probable cause to charge him with anything. But, you know, I said, give me time. I'm going to work this case and I'll find out who's responsible.
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Chapter 7: What complexities arise in serial murder cases?
That boy that drove through that day. 10,000 trucks that drove through. Right.
That's exactly right. Without DNA. That's why they get away with so many. I always loved the books. Have you ever read James Patterson where he's got Detective Crossed? Uh-huh. Yeah. So, you know, I forget the name of his like nemesis, but they always make him seem so, you know, of course he's, he's a sadist, but you know, that was make him seem so brilliant.
And so, and he thought everything through and the truth is most of these guys.
they're just they're you know not not that they're stupid but they're they're so over or so driven by just you know instinct and they they make huge mistakes but they get away with it because there's like you said there's typically no connection between them and the victim so even though they made all these major mistakes the truth is is it's just difficult to pin them down and eventually it's got to take something like like dna and they're already got
five convictions and they go ahead and admit to another 10 because they know they're about to be put into the electric chair or something. Right, right, right.
Yeah. I mean, you know, look, it's complex within itself, but I think the technology and investigations has helped us out a lot as detectives, but you cannot beat a good detective that's just going to get out there and beat the pavement and talk to people and be able to communicate with people.
Well, I was going to say, even with cameras being everywhere, you still have to go to the bank. You still have to go to the convenience store. You still have to go and, you know, it's still all that running around to say, well, if he went this way, he probably would have crossed this liquor store and they've got a camera, so let's go there. You still have to put all those things together.
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Chapter 8: How do homicide detectives cope with the emotional toll of their work?
Then you have to sit there and look through 12 hours of tape or...
120 hours of tape or whatever the case may be and then you know everything it's just um i was gonna say it's like uh you know i've like i said i've talked to a bunch of law enforcement they're like it's it's just like extreme boredom boredom with these spikes of adrenaline it's like being a soldier it's like you're nothing happens for you know three months straight and then you're in a battle for four days straight and it's just exhausting yes that's exactly right yeah
As you say, I was in, you know, I when I was locked up and I would do all this research on guys and I'd order the Freedom of Information Act. Like it would be hours and hours of printing documents, paperwork, ordering docket sheets, reordering documents. And then the spike in adrenaline would be you get mail and you open up the transcript and on page seven, you're like, oh, yeah.
you're running right like i would feel like i had solved the case i'm running around going oh my gosh he was driving in black horse families yeah whatever it would no it always works out like that man you know we we would have there would be days like we would we would be going for for two or three days i remember i had a case on first 48 a couple years well it was probably uh
Oh man, this was in 2010, I want to say it was. This was on, this case was on 1st 48. Man, we had, I mean, during initial phases of the investigation. So what happened was we had this victim that was inside of her home. Some guys break in on her and put her down on the ground and end up shooting, killing, murdering her inside her house.
And then the store and got gas and poured gas all around the house, set the house on fire, tried to burn the body up. Dumbest thing ever. And so during the initial phases of the investigation, you know, I thought it was just going to be a random, I mean, a completely, you know, kind of normal, if that's a word that you can use in homicide cases, which you normally can't use.
I thought it was just going to be like a routine investigation. So while we're out on the scene, some of the family members come to the house and they start asking about the woman's child. Said her child should have been inside of the house. And we hadn't seen a child. There's not a child inside of the house. So now...
The case switches from just a routine investigation to now we are looking for an adopted child. So we just, we go, we run for hours and hours and hours. And then we ended up locating the child, you know, at a friend of hers house. So, you know, and then we go back into the routine of investigating the case. And maybe two or three hours after that, we get a big lead of where,
The victim's property may have been or whatever. We run and go start investigating that portion. You're very right. That's the ups and downs of a homicide investigation. Sometimes you move a little bit slow. Sometimes you're running your tail off for hours and hours. Sometimes you're running your tail off for days. That's the way it works.
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